Blogs/Web Pages/Articles Care leavers met with Jacqueline Wilson to debate the true reality of care Eve Livingston 2018 When the latest book about Tracy Beaker saw her end up in a less than fairytale adult life, there was anger from many who'd had childhoods in care. The Big Issue arranged for her creator Jacqueline Wilson to meet care-experienced readers to hear why they felt cheated External Website

Writers Lorenzo Carcaterra In his 1995 memoir, Lorenzo Carcaterra tells the story of being incarcareted in a juvenile detention centre in 1967 because of an accident in which a man was seriously injured as Lorenzo and his 3 friends were stealing from a New York hot dog vendor. Lorenzo then went on to become a copy boy for The New York Daily News in 1976 and worked his way up to working as an entertainment journalist. He began writing books in 1988 and his second one, Sleepers, became a New York Times bestseller in 1995 and was made into a feature film in 1996. External Website

Blogs/Web Pages/Articles Who Cares? Scotland project wins national campaign award Who Cares Scotland An announcement that Who Cares? Scotland’s Kenny Murray was recognised at National Campaigner Awards 2019 for his work in drawing attention to negative representations of Care Experienced People. External Website

Films/Videos The Accidental Twins 2024 The Accidental Twins (2024) is a documentary – in Spanish – about the switching at birth of twins in Columbia. Jorge Bernal was 25 when he was suddenly confronted by the possibility that his twin brother was not his biological brother. In December 1988 two sets of twins were born – 1 set in Bogota and 1 set in the rural area of Santander. Because of concerns about one of the babies born in Santander, the baby was transferred to the Bogota hospital. The baby who was returned to Santander was not the infant born there. The documentary explores the difficulties the 4 young men – emotionally & psychologically - face as they realise the ramifications of the discovery. External Website

Television Shows The Bay 2018 The Bay, an ITV crime series starring Morven Christie, uses a foster care character in Series 2 (2019) as a courier for crimes. Cassie is a 12 year old in foster care who delivers a gun to a hitman. She's done other deliveries before but not for anything so serious. The character didn't need to have been in foster care. Already in Series 1 there was a police officer's 15-year-old acting as a courier for a drug dealer. External Website

Authors E Care Collective Zine - Issue 1.pdf ➝ A Hidden Intersectionality: Care Experience, Disability ➝ Kirsty Capes | 'It’s important to have stories about the care experience that are positive' | The Bookseller ➝ Back to Top

Blogs/Web Pages/Articles Drawing on Childhood: New exhibition examines why so many of our most cherished fictional heroes are orphans | The Independent Etan Smallman 2016 A review of the Drawing on Childhood Exhibition at the Foundling Museum External Website

Writers Nicky Campbell 1961- Nicky Campbell was born Nicolas Andrew Argyl Campbell in 1961. He was born in Edinburgh and adopted when he was four days old. Now a radio and television presenter and a journalist, Nicky Campbell began his career writing jingles. In 2004, Nicky Campbell wrote Blued Eye Son about his experience of being adopted. He has won numerous awards, including being appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2015. External Website

Films/Videos Elf 2003 On Christmas Eve, an orphan crawls into Santa's sack & taken to North Pole. After the child is discovered, the elves name him Buddy after his diaper's brand label & Papa Elf adopts him. When Buddy discovers he's not an elf travels to New York to search for his biological father. External Website

Radio & Podcast Charlie Chaplin's Funny Walk and Other Music Hall Mysteries The History Listen 2021 In this interesting podcast, Australian journalist and broadcaster, Fiona Gruber, argues that Care Experienced actor and comedian Charlie Chaplin's funny walk may actually have been created by her great grandfather, Walter Groves. It was not uncommon back in the old music hall days for people to take ideas from others, and apparently the practice continues to be rife in the entertainment industry today. External Website

Actors Ronald Magill English actor, Ronald Edmund Magill (21 April 1920 – 6 September 2007) was in an orphanage as a child.Ronald Magill was born in Hull, a port city in East Yorkshire, England. Ronald’s parents were both teachers. At the age of 9, Ronald’s father died and the child was sent to live in Birmingham, in an orphanage. He visited his mother in Ireland during school holidays. After the war, Magill took on a variety of performing roles until he settled in at the Nottingham Playhouse where for 9 years he worked as both artistic director and actor. He is best remembered for playing Amos Brearly in the British soap opera Emmerdale from the first episode in 1972 to 1991, and appeared again in this role in 1994 and 1995. External Website

Blogs/Web Pages/Articles John Fashanu 1992 Most people know Justin Fashanu as the world's first openly gay professional footballer. Less people know that he spent time in both residential and foster care as a child. Here he is being interviewed in 1992 for 'Who Cares?' magazine by three young people in care. (Thanks to Jim Goddard for the link) External Website

Television Shows The Serpent Queen 2022 The historical drama, The Serpent Queen (2022) tells the story of Catherine de Medici (1519-1589). Born in Italy, Catherine is orphaned when young (some sources say within weeks of her birth). She is left with a grandmother who also soon died. From then until she is shipped off to France to get married at age 14, Catherine is in a convent. According to the television series, and entirely plausible given what we know went on in convents, Catherine was treated like a servant and whipped mercilessly when 'disobedient.' Significantly, the older Catherine is played by Samantha Morton who grew up in the UK state care system. External Website

News - broadcast, print, internet, magazine articles Adopted and Locked Away: Kids promised ‘forever homes’ instead confined in for-profit institutions Associated Press 2026 In this 29 April 2026 article, Claire Galofaro & Sally Ho report on the number of adoptees who have become a part of the USA’s “troubled teen industry”. Galofaro & Ho write that despite representing only 2% of American children, adoptees make up between 25% & 40% of those in residential care, there because of their alleged reactive behaviour. Adoptees have told Galofaro & Ho that this is a “shadow orphanage system”, whereby children who are promised “forever homes” are instead institutionalized, “some for years, in oppressive and sometimes abusive facilities”. External Website

Fiction featuring Care Experience The Subjects Sarah Hopkins 2019 Daniel is a sixteen-year-old drug dealer and he's going to jail. Then, suddenly, he's not. A courtroom intervention. A long car ride to a big country house. Other 'gifted delinquents'- the elusive, devastating Rachel, and Alex, so tightly wound he seems about to shatter. So where are they? It's not a school, despite the 'lessons' with the headsets and changing images. It's not a psych unit-not if the absence of medication means anything. It's not a jail, because Daniel's free to leave. Or that's what they tell him. He knows he and the others are part of an experiment. But he doesn't know who's running it or what they're trying to prove. And he has no idea what they're doing to him. External Website

Writers Michel Houellebecqu Michel Thomas Houellebecq (b. circa 1956) was born on the French island Réunion. When he was five months old, he was sent to live in Algeria with his maternal grandparents. At around age 6, he was then transferred to the care of his paternal grandmother whose maiden name he took for his own (she died in 1978). According to Kathleen Kuiper (Britannica), Houellebecq’s “body of work gives evidence that the abandonment by and continued absence of his parents, who divorced when he was young, deeply scarred him.” Michel Houellebecq is widely regarded as one of France’s best known 20th century novelists, and is sometimes thought of as that country’s most shocking one. External Website

Poets Jackie Kay (Poet) Jackie Kay Jacqueline Margaret Kay, (born 9 November 1961), She was adopted as a baby. Kay is a Scottish poet, playwright, and novelist, known for her works Other Lovers (1993), Trumpet (1998) and Red Dust Road (2011). Kay has won a number of awards, including the Guardian Fiction Prize in 1998 and the Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust Book of the Year Award in 2011.Since 2016, she has been Scots Makar, the national poet laureate of Scotland. She was appointed as chancellor of the University of Salford in 2015. External Website

News - broadcast, print, internet, magazine articles Simone Biles' scathing testimony was a warning about power and complicity MSNBC 2022 In a Senate hearing Wednesday, Biles and several fellow gymnasts called out the FBI, USA Gymnastics and Olympic officials for ignoring sexual abuse in what Biles described as '...largest case of sexual abuse in the history of American sport'. In their testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, several current and former U.S. gymnasts outlined sexual abuse they suffered from former team doctor Larry Nassar, and they condemned people and institutions who they said ignored their pleas for help. The hearing was a follow-up to a Department of Justice report released in July that found FBI officials exhibited "extremely poor judgment" during the Nassar investigation. In response to the report, the FBI called its employees' actions as "inexcusable" and "appalling." Nassar pleaded guilty in 2017 to abusing 10 of the more than 265 women and girls who have come forward to say they were molested. He is serving up to 175 years in prison. External Website

Autobiography/Memoir Our Fathers Cleared the Bush: Remembering Eyre Peninsula Jill Roe 2016 Renowned historian Jill Roe, whose grandparents were early settlers of South Australia's west coast, revisits her mid-century childhood in what was one of Australia's most remote regions, including living in kinship care with her grandparents. Rhythms of work and play were punctuated by moments - the annual show, a visit from young Queen Elizabeth - that connected farming lives, however briefly, to a changing world.With urbanisation comes uncertainties. As her story unfolds, Jill Roe contemplates the future of Eyre Peninsula and the role of regional Australia. External Website

Blogs/Web Pages/Articles Comment: Is ‘lived experience’ a change-maker or ball and chain? Kenny Murray 2021 Kenneth Murray on the stigma associated with 'lived experience'. External Website